1. Scientific Theories and Laws
2. The First Decade (1936-1946)
4. The Second Decade (1946-1956)
6. The Third Decade (1956-1966)
8. The Fourth Decade (1966-1976)
10. The Fifth Decade (1976-1986)
12. The Sixth Decade (1986-1996)
14. The Seventh Decade (1996-2006)
15. The Theory of More than Everything
16. The Eighth Decade (2006-2016)
18. The Ninth Decade (2016-2026)
Appendix A Paintings
Appendix B TTOMTE and a Steady State Universe
Appendix C Musical Compositions
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This journey will be somewhat breathtaking when you realize we're describing events which started off on a Thursday, fifteen billion years ago. (I know the day because when I first read that the universe began fifteen billion years ago, it was on a Thursday.)
I'm going re-use a bunch of the words we defined in Chapter Five on Quantum Mechanics. If they've gotten a little blurred since that chapter, only remember: Light, radiation, and photons are forms of energy. All other names refer to pieces of matter.
TIME after the beginning (the singularity)
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The temperature of the universe is 1,000,000,000,000 Kelvin, consisting of almost all radiation, photons of radiation. Solid particles existing at the time don't live long. Electrons, anti-electrons (positrons), neutrinos, and antineutrinos, pop into existence out of radiation briefly and back into radiation--buzzing back and forth. Quarks, in triplets, combine to become protons and neutrons. These two creatures are more stable than free floating quarks, but still, photons outnumber them by a billion times. The density of the universe, at this time, is four billion times that of water.
The temperature has cooled to 100,000,000,000 K. We can't go without sunscreen yet. (In comparison, the temperature of our sun is fifteen million degrees.) Antineutrinos hit protons creating neutrons and positrons. Neutrinos hit neutrons creating protons and electrons (the ingredients for hydrogen). It's quite a mess. The numbers of protons and neutrons are equal at this stage.
